ICE flew a 2-year-old girl and her father from Minnesota to Texas just hours after arresting them. A federal judge had already ordered the child’s release. Court filings say ICE still went ahead with the flight, raising serious questions about how officials handled the deportation process.
A family stopped and taken into custody
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, agents arrested Elvis Joel Tipan Echeverria and his 2-year-old daughter around 1 p.m. Thursday in south Minneapolis during what officials called a “targeted enforcement operation.” They were taken from a parked car as part of a deportation-related action. The government says Tipan Echeverria had previously been removed from the U.S. and returned without permission. DHS also claims agents tried to give the child to her mother, but she refused.
The family’s lawyer, Kira Kelley, gives a different account. She says the father and daughter were returning from a store and had just pulled into their driveway when ICE agents broke the car windows. Kelley says Tipan Echeverria tried to bring his daughter to her mother inside the house, but agents would not allow it and continued with the detention that later led to the deportation flight.
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Court papers say the mother and other relatives stayed inside because fear gripped them. Kelley also says the agents did not present a warrant. She adds that the father and child hold active asylum claims and lack final removal orders, and she argues that ICE should not have moved them.
A race against the clock in court over deportation
After ICE took Elvis Joel Tipan Echeverria and his 2-year-old daughter into custody, their lawyer, Kira Kelley, quickly tried to stop what she believed was an imminent deportation. Court records show that at about 5:37 p.m. Thursday, less than five hours after the arrest, she filed an emergency petition asking the court to release them.
About 40 minutes later, Kelley filed another motion asking a judge to block any transfer out of Minnesota and to order the child’s release. She says she then spent the next few hours calling ICE lawyers to alert them to the court filings, but they did not respond.
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At 8:11 p.m., U.S. District Judge Kathy Menendez ordered ICE to keep the father and child in Minnesota and directed the agency to release the child by 9:30 p.m. She warned that keeping the child in custody could cause “irreparable harm.”
Minutes later, ICE told the court that the agency had already put the pair on a flight to Texas that left at 8:30 p.m., just 19 minutes after the judge signed the order. A government lawyer later said the agency would return the child, but it was unclear if that had happened.
Claims of bad faith and a wider court fight
On Friday, the family’s lawyer, Kira Kelley, filed another motion asking Judge Kathy Menendez to block all transfers of ICE detainees out of Minnesota, especially in cases involving deportation or long-distance moves. She argued that ICE often moves people out of the state too quickly, making it harder for local courts to step in.
In the filing, Kelley said the agency acted in “intentionally bad faith.” She asked the court to use its power to stop ICE from transferring detainees while courts are still reviewing their cases.
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The government says agents arrested Elvis Joel Tipan Echeverria because he illegally reentered the U.S. after a prior removal. DHS also says agents tried to give the child to her mother, but she refused. The family’s lawyer strongly challenges this version of events.
The case now raises questions about whether agents had a proper warrant, whether they followed the judge’s order, and whether they rushed the transfer to Texas to speed up deportation. At the center of the dispute is a 2-year-old child whom agents took from her home and flew across the country within hours.